with John Jameson, The Jameson Group
Here at Kohn Communications, our interest has always been to help law firms grow. Especially in service industries like law, growth is absolutely critical to remain competitive. Your aim is to provide the best and most services to clients—the more services you provide, the better able you are to attract clients, keep them, and handle all their work. Ultimately, you’re either moving forward or you’re moving backward.
One of the primary strategies to keep moving forward is through lateral hiring—expanding your practice by bringing in partners from other firms. There are many reasons law firms should consider growing their practices through lateral hiring.
1. Lateral hiring is the fastest way to add new practice areas.
2. It’s also a way to upgrade a firm’s talent and rainmaking capabilities.
3. Lateral hiring brings diversity of different experience to your firm. You can actually learn from your new partners’ backgrounds and their experiences.
Tip: Some argue that lateral hiring erodes your firm’s culture, but that really doesn’t need to be the case if you hire carefully and thoughtfully.
4. Growing your firm demonstrates to your partners, both potential and existing, that you are focused on their success. Your partners will be happy to see the firm improving, competing, and doing well, while hopefully good public relations and marketing will surround your growth and generate positive buzz in the marketplace as well.
5. Although individual lawyers can expand their book of business through their own personal efforts, bringing in additional people who have their own books of business and new expertise needed by clients promotes synergy.
6. Lateral growth is the main method by which most firms grow, and among larger firms for the past number of years, along with mergers, it has been the preferred method.
For more tips, check out our marketing seminar “Growth Through Lateral Partners.”